The influence of attention and arousal on emotion perception in adults with severe traumatic brain injury

Neurophysiological correlates of dysregulated emotional arousal in severe traumatic brain injury

“…In accordance with their diminished alpha suppression, TBI participants also showed a trend towards lower levels of autonomic arousal compared to controls (i.e., skin conductance levels). These findings on alpha power and skin conductance levels complement our previous findings (Rushby et al, 2013), as well as previous TBI studies consistently demonstrating lowered arousal responses to emotional stimuli, across a range of physiological, and self-report measures (Blair and Cipolotti, 2000;de Sousa et al, 2012de Sousa et al, , 2011de Sousa et al, , 2010Hopkins et al, 2002;McDonald et al, 2011;Sanchez-Navarro et al, 2005;Saunders et al, 2006). Notably, future research may wish to ascertain whether these TBI-related patterns on alpha are reflected in abnormal patterns of activity in the other frequency bands (delta, theta, and beta bands).…”

“…Such deficits are pervasive, being evident in response to different stimulus modality presentations (emotional faces and film clips), and across different types of measures (physiological and self-report ratings). Specifically, the physiological evidence from TBI studies points to muted skin conductance, reduced eyeblink startle and facial EMG (electromyography) responses (Blair and Cipolotti, 2000;de Sousa et al, 2012de Sousa et al, , 2011de Sousa et al, , 2010Hopkins et al, 2002;McDonald et al, 2011;Sanchez-Navarro et al, 2005;Saunders et al, 2006) to aversive stimuli in particular, including angry facial expressions, distressing film clips, and unpleasant pictures (e.g., IAPS; Sanchez-Navarro et al, 2005). Deficits in psychophysiological responding to aversive stimuli in severe TBI are reflected in lower self-reported levels of arousal (e.g., Saunders et al, 2006) and valence (de Sousa et al, 2010).…”

“…Inconsistent findings on putative indices of arousal (e.g., skin conductance, heart rate, respiration, and pupil dilation) is thought to arise from poor definition of arousal as a construct (Oken et al, 2006). In distinguishing arousal from phasic task-related ''activation'', Barry et al (2005) maintain that skin conductance level (SCL) provides an objective 'gold-standard' measure of the relatively slow, longer-lasting state changes that are commonly associated with levels of arousal (Barry et al, 2005;Barry and Sokolov, 1993;Malmo, 1959;Nagai et al, 2004;Raine et al, 2000;Rushby and Barry, 2007), as well as valence effects over time (enhanced for angry versus happy face viewing, McDonald et al, 2011).…”

All alone with sweaty palms — Physiological arousal and ostracism

“…During simple habituation paradigms, in which participants are presented with a series of repetitive stimuli, SCL shows an initial increase (sensitization) with new or novel stimuli, but rapidly habituates with stimulus repetition (Barry and Sokolov, 1993;Rushby and Barry, 2007). However, when participants are actively engaged in a task, habituation slows, or does not occur (Barry, 2004;McDonald et al, 2011). Previous research has examined the autonomic response evoked by an aversive stimulus such as physical pain and found that skin conductance increases (Tursky, 1974).…”

Ostracism and physiological arousal following traumatic brain injury

“…These reductions in self-reported emotional experience are also reflected in objective physiological measures. For example, using facial mimicry and skin conductance as a measure of physiological engagement, people with severe TBI have been found to have muted responses to photos of affective faces [18], unpleasant stimuli [16,19] and emotionally laden videos [20]. Indeed, some have proposed that this loss of physiological responsivity to emotional stimuli is directly linked to diminished accuracy in emotional and social judgements [21,22].…”